Whatever service that would allow something as simple as 100 geo transcoding requests (from street address to geocode) would be ideal. I know that google maps allows 15000 daily, but it is written in Javascript. I was wondering if I could get something written in a language that at least allows for database connections.
+2
A:
There's a non-JavaScript variant of the Google Maps geocoder (check the TOS - you'll need to be doing this to eventually display stuff on a Google map), and you're not going to find any geocoding services that allow a direct database connection.
ceejayoz
2010-02-17 19:20:46
I meant a language that would support a DB connection.
Zombies
2010-02-17 19:23:25
The non-JavaScript variant can be used in any language, as it provides easily readable XML and JSON data formats.
ceejayoz
2010-02-17 19:26:45
+1
A:
Zombies, you have two options here - getting the lat/longs from a webservice at runtime or bulk geocode your entire database before hand. The latter option is ideal since the geocoding lookup through a webservice is time consuming and can effectively destroy the user experience.
For bulk geocoding you could use google maps geocoding through http geocoding as suggested by ceejayoz. However currently google has a limitation of 15,000 requests per day. If you database is not too large, you could easily geocode all the records using this.
Alternatively you can look at geocoding apps where you can supply an data file and get it geocoded. This can then be uploaded directly back to your DB. Some geocoding apps are geocoder.us and bulkgeocoder.com. They both seem pretty cheap and might just work for you.
Jack
2010-02-22 09:39:54
A:
You could also use OpenStreetMap Nominatim if its crowd-sourced data with CC-BY-SA licence suits your purpose.
peSHIr
2010-03-05 14:20:20